Remembering when The Big E finally won the Big One & earned No. 1

The Big E is watching the final installments from the NBA supreme courts not the least bit concerned with whether the outcome is a Heat repeat or the likely closing championship chapter for San Antonio’s Tim/Tony/Ginobili triple play.

Instead Elvin is relishing and reliving his days from 1978 when he stood with his Bullets bunch on the NBA’s grandest championship stage holding the hardware. Finally.

The forever No. 1 or 1A of UH hoops with Olajuwon emerging from the season’s final game No. 1. Finally.

June 7, 1978. Hayes’s tag-team partner in muscle Wes Unseld secured the verdict over Seattle. Two free throws in the final 12 seconds. A 105-99 victory in the roundball battle of Washingtons. The District ruled over the state.

The Bullets lowering the boom on the Sonics from down 3-2 in the set. Shooting down and breaking down the most strict Association protocol by gaining NBA heaven with a Game 7 win on the road. Only the third – and still the last – outfit to win a max-out championship series on the road.

That Hayes was strictly a Silent E for the last 8:00 in Seattle after fouling out, that he scored the least of any of the Bullet’s six double-digit scorers (12 points on 10 shots) was largely irrelevant.

A non-champ into his 10th NBA season despite a 10-year All-Star run. The first four with the Rockets including a one season return to his adoptive hoop hometown before the low-grade trade to DC. For Jack Marin. Known as much for high-volume bickering with mates and coaches as for his low-post turnaround bank-shot scoring.

Until …

Finally the vindication, at age 32, for all those occasions accused of disappearing at crunch time and prime time. A rep that dated back to his Cougar campus days before and after taking down UCLA in “The Game of the Century.”

“They can say whatever they want,” said Hayes in the visitor’s Heineken-soaked locker room. “But they gotta say one thing – E’s a world champion. He wears a ring.”

And so thirty-five years right now the capital celebrated their first title team in 36 years, when the Redskins beat the Bears for the 1942 NFL championship. The first bling for the Bullets in their then-16 seasons remains the one and only in franchise history.

Hayes helped fuel a encore trip to the Finals, again against the Sonics, Washington’s fourth in nine years, losing the rematch in a quicksilver five-game knockout. Elvin later returned to Rocketball in 1981 for the three-season close-out to his Hall of Fame career, eventually anointed one of the 50 greatest from the Association’s first 50 years.

And since, the revamped renamed Wizards have decidedly lost that franchise’s 1970s magic. One single solitary playoff series win in the last 31 seasons. Think about that.

Makes 1978 even more Cro Magnon-suitable for carbon dating.

But thirty-five years ago is very much vivid for Elvin, leaving not the Kingdome but the Seattle Coliseum, standing on the championship throne crowned king.